Star Trek

A film that restarts a series. It opens aboard a ship. There is an attack, the captain is killed, and a child is born at that moment; his father saves hundreds by ramming the ship. Kirk is that child. He grows up loose in Iowa, fights in a bar, and an officer calls him to the academy. Spock is half Vulcan and half human. He was trained in logic and has to suppress his feelings; he is also the one who notices Kirk cheating in a test. An emergency call comes. The cadets are distributed among the ships and Kirk wakes up in a sick bay. From there the film is a chase. A drilling platform, an ice planet, an escape pod and a black hole. Nero is on the other side. A miner from the future who lost his planet; his revenge is personal. What the narrative is interested in is not science fiction but a pairing: the real subject is Kirk and Spock learning to tolerate each other. The time business is a way out. The narrative places events on an alternative line, so the earlier films and series are not voided and a new road opens. The old Spock is played by the original actor and builds a bridge inside the narrative. The visual language is bright. The camera never stops, the lens flares are deliberately overdone, and that became the director's signature. The film won an Academy Award for make-up, the first in the series. Chris Pine, Zachary Quinto, Karl Urban, Zoe Saldaña, Simon Pegg, Eric Bana and Leonard Nimoy are in the cast. J. J. Abrams directed. Who it is for: anyone coming to the series from outside; the film asks for no prior knowledge. Who it is not for: anyone expecting the calm, thoughtful tone of the series; this one is an action film.